Swirling Combustor Energy Converter: H 2 /Air Simulations of Separated Chambers

Angelo Minotti and Paolo Teofilatto
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Angelo Minotti: Department of Astronautic, Electrics & Energetics Engineering, University of Rome "La Sapienza" Via Eudossiana 18, Rome 00184, Italy
Paolo Teofilatto: Department of Astronautic, Electrics & Energetics Engineering, University of Rome "La Sapienza" Via Eudossiana 18, Rome 00184, Italy

Energies, 2015, vol. 8, issue 9, 1-16

Abstract: This work reports results related to the “EU-FP7-HRC-Power” project aiming at developing micro-meso hybrid sources of power. One of the goals of the project is to achieve surface temperatures up to more than 1000 K, with a ? T ? 100 K, in order to be compatible with a thermal/electrical conversion by thermo-photovoltaic cells. The authors investigate how to reach that goal adopting swirling chambers integrated in a thermally-conductive and emitting element. The converter consists of a small parallelepiped brick inside two separated swirling meso-combustion chambers, which heat up the parallelepiped, emitting material by the combustion of H 2 and air at ambient pressure. The overall dimension is of the order of cm. Nine combustion simulations have been carried out assuming detailed chemistry, several length/diameter ratios ( Z / D = 3, 5 and 11) and equivalence ratios (0.4, 0.7 and 1); all are at 400 W of injected chemical power. Among the most important results are the converter surfaces temperatures, the heat loads, provided to the environment, and the chemical efficiency. The high chemical efficiency, h > 99.9%, is due to the relatively long average gas residence time coupled with the fairly good mixing due to the swirl motion and the impinging air/fuel jets that provide heat and radicals to the flame.

Keywords: meso-combustor; hydrogen-air combustion; whirl flow; fluid-structure interaction; computational fluid dynamics (CFD); detailed chemistry (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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